Indian Police To Harness The Power Of Big Data – Will Predict Crime Before It Happens!

Will such usage of technology help the cops to control crime rate in India?

Image that a thief is about to break into a house, whose owners are enjoying a vacation 5000 miles away. As the thief is about to break the lock, he hears police sirens and approaching cops.

What happened here, the thief will wonder. Maybe he was not aware of big data powered predictive policing, which will soon become a norm in India.

The big question here is: Will such usage of technology help the cops to control crime rate in India?

Big Data To Predict Crime: The Indian Way

National Crime Records Bureau, which is responsible for collecting and storing crime related data all over India, has decided to use the power of information and data for the implementing the next generation of crime control tactics.

Welcome to Predictive Policing, which has made some great inroads in countries like USA, and is about to break the backs of Indian criminals.

By March 2018, National Crime Records Bureau will start executing big data based predictive policing in states of Kerala, Odisha, Maharashtra, Haryana and Tripura and by end of 2018, whole of India will be covered.

Hyderabad-based Advanced Data Research Institute (ADRIN) is right now creating a software, which can predict crime before it happens, using the enormous amount of data stored with National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Predictive Policing: How Will It Work?

Criminal activities are often interconnected with several common traits, and the new software will pick up those common traits, and predict the future of crime.

For instance, in a town of 5,00,000 people, the software will observe that maximum number of burglaries happen between 1st and 7th, which are the pay days. Most number of crimes occur between 7 PM and 10 PM, between the bridge and the main junction.

This information can be used to predict further crimes, in future.

Multiply it with millions of data points, and we get a comprehensive picture.

A source said, “It is basically use of big data analytics to predict geographical areas where crime is most likely to take place, after taking into account various factors followed by analysis”

Based on this information, police can step up surveillance, enforce more manpower and basically stop the crime before it happens.

Factors like geographical location of the crime, population, race, lifestyle, social issues etc. can be combined and big data, and analyzed by a AI platform to churn out crime predictions.

The expert said, “Crime pattern identification, crime prediction and alerts, redeployment of police resources, monitoring social media and news analysis relating to crime is part of the project,”

As per some reports, Los Angeles Police Dept. was able to reduce thefts by 33%, violent crimes by 21% and property related crimes by 12%, using predictive policing. They did it after feeding their software with 13 million crimes committed in the last 80 years.,

And Chicago Police has in fact used big data to target those criminals who were expected to be active. And before they could act, police nabbed them.

National Crime Records Bureau has already signed a MoU with Advanced Data Research Institute, and things would start rolling out soon.

Only one advice for criminals now: Either change your profession or change your style and modus operandi!

Mohul keenly observes the nuances of Indian startup world; and tries to demystify the secrets behind Technology, Marketing, Mobile and Internet. He is a Writer by passion, Marketer by choice and Entrepreneur by compulsion. Follow him on Twitter here: @_mohul